With online travel agencies battling for customers, improving the Web customer interface has been a focus for years. Some airline booking displays have been honed to allow for a display of multiple prices, but until now, hotel booking sites have been plagued with the need to click incessantly in order to compare prices. A new display matrix is changing that.
CheapOair Hotels has created a new online display that allows users to see all available hotels organized by category and other criteria. A roll-over function pops up a more detailed description of each property. For a first look at what is available in a city during specific dates, this system offers an easy way to get a quick snapshot of hotel availability and prices.
The new Cheapoair.com display can be set to display properties according to distance from the city center, by price and by name. The default view is by price. This view allows users to see the lowest priced hotels available by category.
This new display is part of an effort by CheapOair.com to push into the top tier of online travel agencies. CheapOair Hotels plans to include user reviews, dynamic packaging and a Google map that clearly pinpoints all hotel options available on one map.
Until this new display, hotel results were shown on virtually all online travel agency sites as either lists or generalized matrixes that didn’t include hotel names or specific locations. Time will tell whether CheapOair.com will be able to shift traffic because of the new display. However, consumers will be the winners if this technology allows for better and easier comparison shopping.
